Intro post Hello all! I just joined this community and I tell you it's a saving grace. I work in tech support, for a small company (of about 22 people total) who service the tire retreading industry. I support the software (run on a unix korn shell platform) and hardware (symbol pocket pc's and palm computers) and I've got stories just like the rest of you.

What makes it infinitely worse, is that I have to deal with Tire Retreaders. The most blue collar worker you could ever imagine, and most don't own a computer themselves.

For instance, yesterday, I had to explain what the cursor was, and that it wasn't someone with a foul mouth.

BAH!!! Bah, I say. First of all, why the hell don't these idiots understand that just because the answer I am giving them is not what they want to hear that doesn't mean I am NOT answering their question.

Second of all, if some stupid (insert profanities here) tech uninstalls open office from my machine at work again, I'm going to put a bomb in the monitor, I swear.

ummm. first call resolutions? my trainer never told me about those. Last night at the end of my shift, I get a call from a woman who is not moving any data. Can't ping out or do any sort of tracert. She was instructed by another tech that she had spoken with four times prior to contact Dell (her OEM). His suggestion was that there was some sort of firewall in Norton Anti-Virus 2002 that was causing the issue. Which doesn't even have a firewall. So she calls Dell. They have her run ipconfig and tell her the reason she's not moving data is because her IP and default gateway are the same. But that was certainly not the issue. So I run some tests from the office. Connect to her pop as her and I duplicate her issue perfectly. So I checked her Authentication Profile and notice she subscribes to the family filter. Which means she needs to use a proxy in her browser. So we add that and she's pulling up Google. So I was so kind as to CC a copy of the trouble ticket to the prior tech. This guy is supposed to be some uber tech too. Next time, try using the First Call Resolutions.

Like So Many Deer I catch them In my Headlights. I work in Data Business Support. I talk to commercial customers with (usually) Very Expensive accounts. I do not talk to Residential customers, if they wander into my queue by "mistake" I transfer them to the appropriate department. The part I love is this...

Me: Thank you for calling Cox Communications, this is Me how can I help you?Them: Something something, internet broken, no email, something somethingMe: Hmm, lights on your modem? Stuff, something, City are you in?Them: Uhh, Springdale.Me: Ok, and what is the name of your Company?Them: Uhhhh, Cox Communications?Me: No, I mean the name of your business.Them: Uhhh, what now?Me: Hold on just a sec.Them: Oh, ummmm, ok.Then I drop them in the abyss that is Data Residential Support!

Yea, thats happened like 6 times today. Even better is this one.

Me: *Greeting*Them: I think I hit the wrong button.. But anyway..Me: Thats Ok, hold on just a sec.Them: No, wait, wha *click*And to the abyss they go.

Its great. They think are so smooth. And I drop kick their asses to at least a 30 minute wait.

Greetings "Uuum, my printer isn't working...""How so?""It's dead"...Does it give you an error message??""oh no... It is just printing really bad, it's smearing almost a few lines distance""When did this start happening""After I cleaned it this morning""What did you use to clean it?""Q-tips and nail polish remover"

uuum, yeah. . Anyway, I too work technical support, for a chain of supermarkets. Problems ranging from registers acting posessed, and headquarter office printer problems. Fun fun. saw the community and I had to join. :)

Greetings Just found this today, its a perfect place for me to vent about my job. I work for Microsoft Outlook tech support. Note I said Outlook, not MSN. I'd say roughly 50% of our calls are people who MSN told to call us to do something as simple as check the checkbox for "Logon using secure password authentication" in their account properties.

My main beef with MSN is that they seem to be actively trying to break their customers systems. Why else would they release a version of their software that upon installation silently converts the persons email account to a web-based HOTMAIL type account, which is incompatible with everything except Outlook Express and MSN explorer? When that happened every Outlook user was totally fucked.

More recently, they started requiring a name/PW and secure password authentication for SMTP servers (not to mention that they firewall port 25 outgoing, so MSN dialup users can ONLY use MSN SMTP servers). Because of this name/PW restriction, now their service is incompatible with Outlook 97, OE4, and basically every other email client. No linux clients, no beos clients, no other windows clients except OE5+ and Outlook98+ can send mail now.

We get surveys for customer satisfaction. Since these changes have taken place, OUR survey level has dropped about 20%, because when the independent survey company calls our customers to find out if they were satisfied with our (Outlook) tech support, they just say they're surveying for a Microsoft issue, and everyone thinks that we're MSN, and gives us crappy ratings.

Finally, here's something humorous that a MSN tech told one of my callers (while I was muted cause I was warm transferring the customer to MSN):MSN Tech: The reason you can't check mail right now is that the Microsoft Outlook Express mail server is down.

So MSN maintains a separate server for each client that is being used to access POP3 mail? :)